Learning A Lot from the Happy Wanderers

We had our second experience hosting
volunteer helpers here at Sunflower Farm last week. And just like our
week with Mike and Melissa in early June, it was a pretty awesome
experience. HelpX (https://www.helpx.net/index.asp) is similar to the WWOOF program (http://www.wwoof.org/)
but you don’t necessarily have to be an organic farm to participate in
having people come and work in exchange for room and board.

I am a strong believer in life long learning and this summer I have learned a lot without ever having to leave my house.

Gwen
and Dave are a young couple from Syracuse, N.Y. They have both
completed degrees in Environmental Biology and are exploring their
options for their future paths. I think they already have a pretty good
idea, but they enjoy HelpXing as a way to get out and learn from others.
I think it’s a brilliant concept and shows incredible maturity on their
part.

It turned out that Gwen & Dave spent their first week
here in Canada at John & Denice’s U-Pick Blueberry farm. John &
Denice are good friends of ours and we’ve blogged about their amazing
highbush blueberry farm here
. We, of course, are very competitive with John and Denice and when we
discovered that they’d taken Gwen and Dave on a wine tour of Prince
Edward County during their stay it was pretty clear that John &
Denice had ratcheted up the game and we’d have to come up with something
pretty amazing to compete. Well, not really, I would never try and
compete with that. The best we could offer was daily swims in 5th Depot Lake which was pretty crucial since Gwen & Dave were here during a brutal heat wave.

When
we asked John and Denice about Gwen and Dave, they raved about them so
our expectations were pretty high and they did not disappoint. It
started with the rain we got the morning after they arrived. We’d gone
weeks without any rain, so I was pretty happy and impressed that their
arrival coincided with the rain.

After performing such a magical
feat, they could have spent the rest of the week resting on their
laurels but they didn’t. They were up and in the garden by 6:30 a.m. to
try and beat the heat. What was so refreshing about Gwen & Dave was
how self-directed they were. I could show them the area I wanted weeded
and they just went to it. They were meticulous around the plants and
aggressive in the middle of the rows. They made great progress and the
garden has never looked better. I want to give tours now to show it off!

When
it was time to water I just needed to tell them the high priority
plants (i.e. the ones I am going to be able to sell for the greatest
financial return) and they were on it. Dave and I expanded the garden,
which required a lot of weed chopping and pick axing. And I’ve got to
say, for a couple that eats a plant-based diet, they had a lot of
stamina, especially considering the brutal heat and humidity. We worked
in the garden until about noon, and then they worked in the shade
hanging garlic up to dry and trimming and cleaning garlic in the
afternoon.

But
really, the greatest thing about having people like Gwen and Dave come
and work here is the intellectual stimulation. Whether it was politics,
science, renewable energy or religion, we had really great discussions
with these two. Since they’ve worked on other farms they shared ideas
they had learned elsewhere and since Michelle and I haven’t traveled it
was great to live vicariously through the stories of their journeys.

I
learned something else when Gwen pointed out some “slime mould” in the
blueberry patch. I had seen this before but had no idea what it was. And
now I’ve got to say that I know way more about slime mould than I ever
thought I would. Like how intelligent they are, and how when it’s time
to reproduce, some of the cells decide to sacrifice their ability to
reproduce and form stalks that other cells can basically climb up to
release their spores. Go figure - sacrificial slime mould cells! It sure
made for interesting dinner conversation!

Dave had worked a farm
where they washed the garlic after digging it up. I’m paranoid about
moisture around my garlic because I want it as dry as possible to
maximize how long it lasts. But there have been years we’ve harvested it
during a wet spell so sometimes it’s unavoidable. Here Gwen and I are
watching Dave shake some garlic vigorously in a rain barrel to get the
dirt off. The washed garlic looks great and is now hanging up to dry, so
I’ve labeled it as “Dave’s Great Garlic Experiment” and will follow it
to see how it lasts over the winter.

At
one point Dave and I were busy expanding the garden near a row of large
pine trees. It was nice to be able to work in the shade and when I
mentioned to Dave how nice it was to have this shady spot, he
immediately said, “Yea, good for lettuce.” Well, I might have written a
gardening book, but that doesn’t mean that I’m always thinking straight
in the spring during my mad dash to get everything planted. So next year
I’ll remember to plant the lettuce in that section, thanks to Dave’s
great observation. There are just so many things to remember in a garden
and some times it takes someone to point out the obvious to you!

Dave
is a great guitar player and Gwen pulled out a mandolin at one point,
so we got free entertainment along with everything else!

For
people like Michelle and me who are pretty happy living alone in our
isolated spot, this whole process is a bit of a stretch. We live 3 miles
from our nearest neighbor because we like solitude. We also tend to
graze all day rather than eating regular meals, so to have to prepare
three regular meals a day is kind of different for us. But we know how
important it is to eat properly in order to be able to keep working at
the pace we were working in the garden and of course we felt an
obligation to feed our helpers well.

We had a great week. We
accomplished a huge amount in the garden. We learned a lot. And we
thoroughly enjoyed the company of a charming, intelligent, well-grounded
young couple who we would like to call friends for a long time.

As
I said to both of these volunteer couples as we sat down for one of our
first meals, “This is just about the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.
We’ve never met you and have no idea if we’ll get along or whether or
not you’re some sort of psycho killers, and you don’t know much about
us, and we’re going to live and work together for a week, and then we’ll
probably never seen you again. It’s just weird.” And they agreed.

And yet from this huge potential for weirdness came a really great experience.

This
was good for me. I’m past 50 and getting set in my ways. I don’t like
staying up late anymore. I have no time for expensive restaurants. I
have one mug I like to drink coffee out of. I have one cultivator that I
use for just about everything in the garden. Friday night is “Pizza
Night” even if a tornado has blown down our house, and Pizza Night calls
for Dr. Pepper in the Coke glass that I love.

For someone as
inflexible as me, this bizarre and risky experiment with people coming
to work and learn on the farm was a huge leap of faith, with a dramatic
payback. If this keeps up I might be able to try Pizza Night on Thursday
one of these days!

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